The first words of today’s reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah are “comfort, O comfort my people.” This applies to us just as much as it applied to the ancient Israelites, because we are God’s people. As a parent comforts a child, so our God speaks to us with words of comfort. The Father says, with the Son, in the Holy Spirit that our “term,” our punishment is finished. There is no need any more to live in hopelessness, to be overwhelmed by fear, to feel as if we have to give in to anxiety and sadness. Someone has come to us who will help us straighten out those winding roads that we’re walking, someone who will help us to get out of the dead-end streets that we ended up taking, someone who takes down the walls of the small rooms that we have boxed ourselves in. There is no need to live in fear and trembling, no need to live in guilt and shame. Christ really does offer us new life, a new way of being, a new way of living.
The second reading, from the second letter of St. Peter, says that the Lord is not late in fulfilling his promise. What is this promise?…that He will come back and establish definitively the Kingdom of God. St. Peter says that the Lord is patient with us, because He obviously wants many people to accept this invitation to enter the Kingdom of God. Part of accepting this invitation is repentance: we are to repent, to turn away from evil ways, and to embrace virtue and goodness. As we wait, as we patiently watch for the Lord’s return, St. Peter says that we are to lead lives of “holiness and godliness,” as we anticipate and even hasten the “coming of the day of God.” What does it mean to hasten? It means that God is “quick to respond to human repentance” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, Scott Hahn ed., pg. 465, 2010). In other words, when we try to turn from our evil ways, God will come to us quickly with His grace and divine assistance. We need this divine assistance because, as the Catechism says, “According to the Lord, the present time is the time of the Spirit and of witness, but also a time still marked by ‘distress’ and the trial of evil which does not spare the Church and ushers in the struggles of the last days. It is a time of waiting and watching” (CCC 672).
Finally, in the Gospel, we hear of John the Baptist preparing the way for the Messiah. “That master theologian of the third century, Origen, observed a pattern that contains a great mystery: whenever the Lord Jesus came, he was preceded in that coming by John the Baptist” (Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Homiletic Directory, #88). Origen mentions that John leapt in the womb of Elizabeth to “announce the presence of the Lord” in the womb of Mary, John preached repentance in the Jordan before the Messiah made his public appearance, and finally John also baptized Jesus in the Jordan (Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Homiletic Directory, #88). It is noteworthy that the Church wants us, priests and homilists, to stress these calls to repentance, particularly on the second and third Sundays of Advent. To repent is to straighten-out crooked paths, is to choose a new road, is to accept that new life in Christ which is offered to all Christians. St. Ephraim, Confessor, Deacon, and Doctor of the Church writes, “Let no one say: I have sinned in many ways and so there is no hope of pardon for me. He who says this does not know that God is the God of the repentant; Who came into this world because of those who were sick” (The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, M.F. Toal ed., vol. 3, pg. 308, 1959). When we repent, we have a special claim on the Lord’s Merciful Heart: “God is the God of the repentant” says St. Ephraim, God will quickly respond to our repentance, as St. Peter suggests in his letter. Maybe this Advent it is time to revisit those areas, those times in our lives, which were dark, and straighten out those roads with the help of a good confession.
My brothers and sisters, the Lord, through the prophet Isaiah, speaks to us words of comfort. There is no need any more to live in hopelessness, fear, anxiety, and sadness. As we wait in patience for the Lord’s return, St. Peter says that we are to lead lives of “holiness and godliness,” as we anticipate and even hasten the “coming of the day of God.” The Gospel, through St. John the Baptist, calls us to repentance, because the repentant, those who are sorry for their sins, have a special claim on God’s heart. May Mary, the Mother of Mercy, help us in these days to make straight the paths of the Lord.
(Fr. Paweł Ratajczak, OMI, Dec. 10, 2023)